The BBB’s initial impetus into examining Valve happened when they came across these findings:

On June 25, 2013, BBB recognized a pattern of complaints from consumers regarding product, service and customer service issues. Consumers allege the games they purchase from Valve Corporation or Steam malfunction, do not work or have an invalid CD key. Consumers also claim the company blocks users from accessing their library of games. Consumers further allege they attempt to contact the company for assistance, but Valve Corporation fails to correct the gaming issues, does not correct credit card charges or issue a refund, or does not respond at all.

Compounded by the fact that Valve didn’t address them after being informed on July 1, 2013, the BBB came to the conclusion that Valve deserved an “F.” For the whole break down check the page linked to but here is a quick statistical breakdown:

718 complaint(s) filed against business

Failure to respond to 503 complaint(s) filed against business

17 complaint(s) filed against business that were not resolved

Business has failed to resolve underlying cause(s) of a pattern of complaints

Valve Customer Service has had a poor reputation for years now, but to see the numbers provided by the BBB is a bit staggering. Of course, the BBB is not the be all end all authority (and is a private organization) on things such as this (they are heavily criticized for it in many ways), but it is respected enough and has a respectable Vision, “An ethical marketplace where buyers and sellers trust each other,” so there shouldn’t be too much in the way of disregarding their criticism here, especially considering the data right there (though again the collection of that could be open to criticism).

More importantly to consumers, the BBB is fairly substantial and could be the kick in the pants that Valve needs to fix their problem with customer service, even though they deny the BBB’s usefulness. One’s only response to that should be then why have things like Reddit’s value not initiated some kind of change in the past? It is not like people all of a sudden have realized how poor Valve’s customer service has always been.